The Photo Works of Fred Klyver III 1928-2001

SP 3189

These are from the previous box from 7th & Townsend in San Francisco. According to the RR Archives SP 3189 is a GP9R. When I saw this pair of images I was struck by how clean this unit looked. I mean, not disparage SP but some of their road units were pretty hammered by June of 1977 but this looked almost new at that time.

I started to zoom in and explore the image for clues to this cleanliness – the MU lines are clean and fresh, the lettering is sharp, paint looks good and there is very little fuel drip on the tanks.

Of course there are the number plates missing that expose the light bulbs but that’s cool – I didn’t know that there were regular light bulbs back there; I assumed florescent would be the specification.

Missing Teeth

Then I started in on the lettering and spotted this :

?????0-4-77-SAC.

This leads me to believe that the unit was fairly fresh when this image was made in June of 1977., but I wish I could read it better. …-rk